Aiming at a Conviction at All Costs

In some countries (inter alia Sweden) the law prescribes that the police and the prosecutor must be objective, and that they must gather circumstances that support the charge as well as circumstances that tell against the charge. But I do not know of any country where such legislation is taken serious.

In the case of Elvira it is blatant that the police (led by the prosecutor) showed no interest in unearthing whether or not Oswald was guilty. Their aim was to obtain a legal conviction at all costs.

The police and the prosecutor knew that Elvira had no recollections of sexual assaults at the time of the first police interrogation. They knew that she had had no such recollections during the three months preceding this interrogation. They knew that in the first four interrogations there was no trace of any of the crimes for which the father was soon afterwards convicted.

They may not have detected that, with one single exception, Elvira postulated the presence of eyewitnesses at all those assaults for which she had recounted more than a minimum of details. But it is impossible that the police and the prosecutor had not noticed the considerable number of eyewitness events. And they knew that all "eyewitnesses" denied that they had seen any indecent behaviour.

It is an objective and general fact that in cases of sexual abuse it is conspicuously infrequent that one or more eyewitnesses are alleged.

One of the most touching parts of the dialogues is the fragment quoted in chapter 12. Elvira begs for some degree of support, so that she dares tell the truth, viz. that the sexual assaults never happened and that she was the victim of intensive indoctrination. But the police officer immediately applies several persuasive techniques aimed at forcing Elvira to keep quiet about these things. She strongly asserts that Elvira's accounts are really Elvira's memories; that Elvira is wrong when she thinks they are not memories; and that Elvira should just leave out of account the problem whether the accounts are real or fictive. Moreover, she successfully distracts Elvira by requesting further memories from her. And the police officer succeeds.

Underwager & Wakefield (1990:5) very aptly say: "In a curious turnabout, those who claim most strongly that children must be believed, don't believe the child when the child says no abuse occurred." (my italics).

In chapter 14 Elvira says that what she had told Mollbeck was not correct. She explicitly asks the police officer if she is prepared to receive information that is not correct. Here was a golden opportunity to inquire about a significant part of the context. Who decided that Elvira's account was not correct On what grounds did she decide this In what respects is the information that Elvira provides during the police interrogation incorrect And what other information is correct instead

I am unable to imagine that the need for answering such questions did not spontaneously occur to any police interrogator. The particular officer seems to be aware that the case will collapse, unless she conceals the true facts. A strong case could be made for the hypothesis that the police and the prosecutor were aware of Oswald?s innocence, at the same time as they produced fake evidence and concealed true evidence.

Likewise, Elvira's tendency to promise future recollections that she did not recall at the time of her promise, must have been a valid indicator for the police and the prosecutor.

Elvira later mentioned telephone calls in which she heard children scream in exactly the same way as they do when they are being murdered (by her father and others who belong to the same murder sect). The police began to bug her telephone. Unfortunately they told her what they did. And then she immediately stopped mentioning any further telephone calls.

I cannot help feeling that correct police work would have included intercepting the telephone without informing Elvira. It is no far-fetched hypothesis that the police have realised that Elvira would then have proceeded to recount the same kind of telephone calls. The police may also have realised that such a pattern would be embarrassing, should a competent defence counsel find out about it.

An additional stratagem applied by the police and the prosecutor was to keep Ingrid away from the case. Both realised that there was a risk that the trial would not end in a conviction, if Ingrid were permitted to tell the court that she had neither been exposed to nor observed any indecent behaviour by anyone.

It goes without saying that the entire body of evidence contained many constituents which strongly pointed against the accusations. It was evident that Elvira had not told the truth in any of those respects that had been examined. How then, could the conviction of Oswald and Helena be justified by the argument that Elvira was completely trustworthy concerning those few accusations whose truth-value had not been investigated

In numerous countries many psychiatrists are prepared to provide the kind of evidence needed by the prosecutor. We have seen that Sweden is one of these countries and that Kåreland is one of these psychiatrists. Also here the temporal relation of recency should have been noted. The five judges of the court of appeal had never in any previous case observed another injured party who, because of real sexual assaults, had claimed to have been exposed to other assaults that proved to be imaginary.

On the contrary, it is a recurrent standard phrase in many written judgements, that the injured party had been very careful not to accuse the defendant of more than she was absolutely sure that he had done; and that exactly this cautiousness constitutes a strong reason to conclude that the injured party had told the truth.

The case of Betsy will be presented in chapter 27. In the judgement by the district court (1989-10-27) we shall read:

		"She has, when she made her account, shown considerable caution and has evidently taken great pains to supply only such information that she could hold on to what she said." (bolds by MS) [Q-25:1]

And from precisely this [alleged] modesty the judges of the district court concluded that Betsy had told the truth.

Persuasive techniques are often given the form of factual or logical arguments. Some of these are highly relevant to the Södertälje case. Gumpert (2002:46) claims that even if a child has been indoctrinated to produce an allegation of sexual abuse, this fact does not prove that the child had not been sexually abused.

This claim could at most be true in the same way as an analogous sophism. Today the next future winner of the highest price of the Bellman Lottery is unknown. But if we today decide to convict him of sexual abuse, we cannot be absolutely sure that we had convicted an innocent person.

In the Södertälje case it was not merely proved that Elvira had been indoctrinated by Mollbeck. It was also proved in many independent ways that she had no authentic recollections. Moreover, we were able to observe at close hand how her sham recollections gradually evolved.

In her attempts to disqualify objective experts Gumpert adds a further sophism. Such experts are said to be one-sided and to adhere to a mono-causal aetiology: either an allegation is caused by indoctrination, or else it is caused by authentic recollections. The believers in the mono-causal doctrine are said to have overlooked the significant alternative hypothesis that the allegation might derive from both causal factors.

It should come as no surprise that Gumpert is completely tacit when it comes to the problem of how judges and experts (including herself) would manage to discover that indoctrinated narratives are nevertheless authentic.

It goes without saying that her argument strongly favours the prosecutor and hinders the defence counsel. In so far it is perfectly consistent with another suggestions of hers, viz. that the defence should not even be permitted to engage an expert witness.






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Uppdaterad: 2009-11-19

Yakida